[Milsurplus] HRO

[Hubert Miller]

This is my opinion, and unsubstantiated, but I think if were to work at it, which I don't want to do, I could go a distance toward
substantiating it. My opinion is that the HRO was by this time a secondary receiver, one with lower cost than the larger 
competitors, SP series, RBB-RBC, and certainly much easier to repair, and also reliable, but more unwieldy to use than its
bandswitched contemporaries. The FCC and FBIS didn't use the HRO; they used walls of SX-28 and SP-200s. The military didn't 
use HROs for TTY circuits; they used the SP series. My impression was the HRO was shunted off for secondary users. Yes, that
includes Bletchley Park, where tens of listeners sat with their HROs watching one assigned frequency. I would also guess that 
the U.K. could not afford, or would not be supplied with the best receivers, SX-28 or SP-200s, for this use, and who needs a 
switchable multiband receiver with direct frequency readout for this particular use, anyway ?  The airfields in the U.S. that used
HROs, those receivers also sat on one frequency. BTW, when I was checking the spelling of Bletchley just moments ago, I saw 
this on their page:
"OnThisDay in 1941 the capture of the German weather trawler, München, and the capture of the U-110, provided Bletchley Park 
with codebooks and key sheets for breaking the German Navy #Enigma networks, otherwise known as Dolphin. Visit Bletchley Park today."e 

Some years back, in the 1990s, I met a Canadian gentleman who had been one of those intercept listeners in the U.K. station.
Unfortunately, I did not debrief Hugh Walker of B.C. Canada on his experiences.  Mr. Walker also told me one of his neighbors
was a Stalingrad survivor, but did not talk about it. I would have greatly liked to have interviewed that gentleman also, but you have
to respect their well deserved privacy. I am sure Mr. Walker is SK by now.

In the 1980s and 90s I talked with James Barrows W7BCT ( SK ) who had worked for the FCC and FBIS in Portland and Seattle 
and got a little info on how the foreign broadcast monitoring thing worked. He for a time also cruised the Oregon coast in a 
radio equipped passenger car, trying to listen for and locate possible Japanese submarine transmissions. That mission didn't last
too long, as you'd expect. I told him about the Hallicrafters SSR-1 manual I had, and he did recognize the equipment and inform 
me that this modified SX-28 was "secret" - who knows why ?
-Hue